black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

When it is said that an object occupies a large space in the soul or even that it fills it entirely, we ought to understand by this simply that its image has altered the shade of a thousand perceptions or memories.

Henri Bergson

If reality impacted directly on our senses and our consciousness, if we could have direct communication between the material world and ourselves, art would be unnecessary.
HENRI BERGSON

Art Communication Direct Necessary Reality
I cannot escape the objection that there is no state of mind, however simple, that does not change every moment.
HENRI BERGSON

Escape Moments Object Simple Time
Instinct perfected is a faculty of using and even constructing organized instruments; intelligence perfected is the faculty of making and using unorganized instruments.
HENRI BERGSON

Construction Faculty Instrument Intelligence Organization Perfection
For life is tendency, and the essence of a tendency is to develop in the form of a sheaf, creating, by its very growth, divergent directions among which its impetus is divided.
HENRI BERGSON

Development Direction Essence Form Growth Life
There is nothing [that] disarms us like laughter.
HENRI BERGSON

Guard Laughter Ourselves
In just the same way the thousands of successive positions of a runner are contracted into one sole symbolic attitude, which our eye perceives, which art reproduces, and which becomes for everyone the image of a man who runs.
HENRI BERGSON

Art Attitude Eyes Image Ourselves Reproduction Run Success
Religion is to mysticism what popularization is to science.
HENRI BERGSON

Mystic Popular Religion Science
We are free when our actions emanate from our total personality, when they express it, when they resemble it in the indefinable way a work of art sometimes does the artist.
HENRI BERGSON

Action Artist Expression Freedom
In short, intelligence, considered in what seems to be its original feature, is the faculty of manufacturing artificial objects, especially tools to make tools, and of indefinitely urging the manufacture.
HENRI BERGSON

Artificial Intelligence Manufacture Original Willing
However spontaneous it seems, laughter always implies a kind of secret freemasonry, or even complicity, with other laughers, real or imaginary.
HENRI BERGSON

Complication Imagination Kind Laughter Reality
It is the very essence of intelligence to coordinate means with a view to a remote end, and to undertake what it does not feel absolutely sure of carrying out.
HENRI BERGSON

Carry Essence Feeling Intelligence View
Laughter is the corrective force which prevents us from becoming cranks.
HENRI BERGSON

Correct Force Laughter Prevent
To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.
HENRI BERGSON

Change Creation End Existence Maturity
When we make the cerebral state the beginning of an action, and in no sense the condition of a perception, we place the perceived images of things outside the image of our body, and thus replace perception within the things themselves.
HENRI BERGSON

Action Beginning Body Image Place State
Genius is that which forces the inertia of humanity to learn.
HENRI BERGSON

Force Genius Humanity Knowledge Learning
Life does not proceed by the association and addition of elements, but by dissociation and division.
HENRI BERGSON

Association Division Element Life Process

When it is said that an object occupies a large space in the soul or even that it fills it entirely, we ought to understand by this simply that its image has altered the shade of a thousand perceptions or memories.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

When it is said that an object occupies a large space in the soul or even that it fills it entirely, we ought to understand by this simply that its image has altered the shade of a thousand perceptions or memories.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Henri Bergson Quotes